Vehicles for the transportation by road of cargo have to comply with legal requirements. An important legal requirement—in most European Union countries and countries allied thereto—is that the height of the vehicle, including cargo, should not exceed 4,000 mm. Special dispensation must be obtained when transporting taller cargo.
In accordance with this legal requirement, the maximum height of containers in circulation, so-called “high cube containers”, is 2,896 mm.
The maximum container height of 2,896 mm is calculated as follows:                what is known as the plate height of the tractor unit, such as this may be obtained in the lowest conventional height, is approximately 950 mm;        the thickness (in the vertical direction) of the trailer portion above the plate is, in the case of a ‘tipping frameless’ trailer, approximately 160 mm;        in total, this means that the loading face of the ‘tipping frameless’ trailer is at a height of 1,110 mm above ground level/the road;        for the maximum height of the cargo, in the present case the container, there therefore remains the aforementioned height of 2,896 mm.        
The aforementioned thickness of the trailer above the plate relates, in the present case, to that of a trailer without a tipping frame. In the case of a trailer with a tipping frame, the loading face is higher than the aforementioned 1,110 mm, because the tipping frame itself also has an additional thickness and is located substantially on the loading face of the ‘tipping frameless’ trailer.
Containers of maximum height are often used in transportation by sea, i.e. in the case of sea containers. When such containers of maximum height are supplied to the ship by road or removed from the ship by road, only ‘tipping frameless’ trailers can be used for this purpose. ‘Tipping frameless’ trailers have the drawback that they are incapable of independently unloading the containers. Heavy hoisting installations are required to do this. Hoisting installations of this type are expensive. This high cost of hoisting installations is perhaps not such a major problem in a port area owing to the large numbers of containers to be processed in such an area. However, at the site where the containers are dispatched or received, which is remote from the port, this problem is very apparent, because at this location the numbers of containers to be processed are much lower.
The major advantage of tipping frame trailers is that they are able to load and unload the containers completely independently. In a port environment, containers can optionally be placed on the tipping frame trailer using a hoist installation, but outside the port environment a trailer comprising a tipping frame can independently load or unload both a full and an empty container.
It will be clear that this has major advantages. However, the containers which are in practice frequently used in the case of tipping frame trailers are less tall, i.e. have a maximum height of 2,590 mm or 2,438 mm. In fact, trailers having a plate height of 1,150 mm are often used in this case.